Alabama Moves to State-Ordered Castration
Today Alabama enacted a law that will require, as a condition of parole, that some convicted child sex offenders undergo “chemical castration.”
The new law will mean that those who abused children under the age of 13 will be injected with hormone-blocking drugs before leaving prison. The medication will have to be administered until a judge, not a doctor, deemed it no longer necessary.
A similar bill was proposed last year in Oklahoma but met strong opposition. The former Soviet republic of Moldova also passed a law mandating chemical castration for child sex offenders, in 2012. It was repealed the following year on grounds that it was a “violation of fundamental human rights.”
Unlike castrating a the surgical approach. Instead, the procedure uses various drugs to render the testicles irrelevant. In most cases, medication triggers the pituitary gland to reduce testosterone to prepubescent levels. During debate of the bill, Hurst that if chemical castration, which has a stated goal of decreasing libido to prevent future crimes, “will help one or two children, and decrease that urge to the point that person does not harm that child, it’s worth it.”
